Priority: Pass long-term budget plan

Over the past two years, we have been borrowing about 40 cents of every dollar that we spend. Our revenue as a share of national income is the lowest in 60 years. Our spending as a share of national income is the highest in 60 years. That is not sustainable. We are headed for a fiscal cliff. We can look the other way — and hope somebody else does something — or we can act.

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We can, and we must, act this year.

The president’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, on which I served, made a significant step forward. We showed that members of both parties, when faced with the stark realities of our fiscal situation, can agree on the hard choices needed to align spending with revenues.

Eleven of us — five Democrats, five Republicans and one independent — agreed on a far-reaching package that would provide nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction by 2020. The plan would cut spending, reform the tax system and secure the solvency of Social Security for the next 75 years.

Recognizing that any credible deficit-reduction package must contain significant spending cuts, the commission plan aggressively cut $2.2 trillion in spending over 10 years. Our focus was on wasteful and lower-priority discretionary programs, and we sought to maximize efficiencies throughout the government.

The plan also contained additional health care savings that fully offset the cost of permanently fixing the Medicare physician payment system. Over the long term, it also slowed the growth in total federal health spending.

Overall, the commission plan would reduce the deficit from roughly 8 percent of gross domestic product in fiscal year 2011 to 2.3 percent in 2015 and 1.2 percent in 2020. The debt would fall to 60 percent of GDP by 2023 and 40 percent by 2035. These levels would set the stage for our nation’s continued prosperity well into the future.

To be clear, I supported the commission’s plan as a package — because it represents genuine bipartisan compromise, with both Democrats and Republicans making concessions. If I were writing it myself, I certainly would have done some things differently. But we can’t get everything we want.

The commission’s report embodies three important principles:

1. We can address our long-term budget issues now without damaging our economic recovery. We need to pass a long-term deficit reduction plan that kicks in after the economy is on sounder footing. The longer we delay action, the fewer and more painful policy choices we will have. And we will be less able to address unforeseen economic downturns or disasters in the future. The recent economic crises in Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal demonstrate real consequences of unchecked national debt.